scholarly journals A Semantic Account of Rigorous Simulation

2018 ◽  
pp. 223-239
Author(s):  
Adam Duracz ◽  
Eugenio Moggi ◽  
Walid Taha ◽  
Zhenchao Lin
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Account

Expressivism and Crossed Disagreements

2019 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Javier Osorio ◽  
Neftali Villanueva
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Semantic Level ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Evaluative Language ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
Pragmatic Strategies

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between expressivism and disagreement. More in particular, the aim is to defend that one of the desiderata that can be derived from the study of disagreement, the explanation of ‘crossed disagreements’, can only be accommodated within a semantic theory that respects, at the meta-semantic level, certain expressivistic restrictions. We will compare contemporary dynamic expressivism with three different varieties of contextualist strategies to accommodate the specificities of evaluative language –indexical contextualism – truth-conditional pragmatics –, pragmatic strategies using implicatures, and presuppositional accounts. Our conclusion will be that certain assumptions of expressivism are necessary in order to provide a semantic account of evaluative uses of language that can allow us to detect and prevent crossed disagreements.

Two puzzles on the nominative particle ga in Japanese

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243
Author(s):  
Noriko Kawasaki
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
The Subject

Abstract Back in the 1970s, Kazuko Inoue observed that some active sentences in Japanese allow a prepositional subject. Along with impersonal sentences pointed out by S.-Y. Kuroda, such examples suggest that the nominative subject is not an obligatory element in Japanese sentences. While this observation supports the hypothesis that important characteristics of the Japanese language follow from its lack of (forced-)agreement, Japanese potential sentences require the nominative ga on at least one argument. The present article argues that the nominative case particle ga is semantically vacuous even where a ga-marked phrase is indispensable or the ga-marked phrase is construed as exhaustively listing. Stative predicates require a ga-marked phrase because they can ascribe a property to an argument only by function application. The exhaustive listing reading arises by conversational implicature when the presence of a ga-marked phrase signals that a topic phrase is being avoided. The discussion leads to a semantic account of subject honorification whereby the honorification only concerns the semantic content of the predicate, and does not involve agreement with the subject. It is also shown that sentences with a prepositional subject allow zibun only as a long-distance anaphor, which indicates that they do lack a subject with the nominative Case.

scholarly journals Stem Alternation in Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì Classificatory Verbs: A Cognitive Semantic Account

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussein Al-Bataineh
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Feature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Feature Geometry ◽  
Cognitive Semantic ◽  
Field Notes

This paper investigates the phenomenon of ‘classificatory verbs,’ i.e., a set of motion and positional verbs that show stem alternation depending on the semantic features of one of their arguments. The data is drawn mainly from Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì Multimedia Dictionary, Nicholas Welch’s field notes, and other documentary sources of the language. Tłı̨chǫ classificatory verbs are presented and analyzed in detail. The paper argues that Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì classificatory verbs belong to four semantic subclasses and that these subclasses show a decreasing degree of stem alternations related to argument classification. The inconsistency in stem alternation is triggered by the presence or absence of some semantic features that determine the number of stem allomorphs. Locative verbs are affected by the [COMFORT] feature, and the other three sets are influenced by [TRANSFER], [INITIAL AGENTIVE] and [FINAL AGENTIVE] features. Moreover, the paper outlines a semantic feature geometry that accounts for the observed regularities in classificatory verb stems and their possible variations intra- and cross-linguistically.

scholarly journals Epistemic stance without epistemic modals: the case of the presumptive future

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 459
Author(s):  
Michela Ippolito ◽  
Donka F. Farkas
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Modals ◽  
Epistemic Stance ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
The Future

This paper deals with the non-temporal use of the future in Italian knownas ‘epistemic’ or ‘presumptive’ (PF) in declaratives and interrogatives. We firstdistinguish PF from epistemic necessity and possibility, as well as from weaknecessity modals, providing in the process the main empirical challenges PF raises.We then propose and justify a semantic account that treats PF as a special normalitymodal that involves a subjective likelihood component. Since in our account theprejacent (the proposition in the scope of the modal) is at issue, the use of PF triggersthe implicature that the speaker is not in a position to appeal to what she knows inorder to support her commitment to the prejacent. This, we claim, is the source ofthe intuition that PF is often used to offer a “guess” relative to the question underdiscussion (QUD).

What Sort of Science Is Evolutionary Biology?

Dialogue ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Mohan Matthen
Keyword(s):  
Population Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Epistemology ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Methodological Aspects

Paul Thompson's new book,The Structure of Biological Theories, is about the formalization of evolutionary biology. He is primarily concerned, he says, with the logical, epistemological, and methodological aspects of biological theorizing. The main theme of the book is the opposition between what Thompson calls the syntactic and the semantic conceptions of theories. He wishes to establish that the semantic account is superior to the syntactic in at least three areas: first, it offers a more faithful account of population biology; second, it facilitates a conception of evolutionary biology as a family of interacting theories; finally, it offers us a richer framework for the resolution of methodological problems that have plagued sociobiology and evolutionary epistemology.

scholarly journals A semantic account of metric preservation

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 545-556
Author(s):  
Arthur Azevedo de Amorim ◽  
Marco Gaboardi ◽  
Justin Hsu ◽  
Shin-ya Katsumata ◽  
Ikram Cherigui
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Account

Computationalism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gualtiero Piccinini
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Network Models ◽  
Turing Machines ◽  
Neural Network Models ◽  
Causal Account ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Processing Information ◽  
Empirical Hypothesis

The introduction of the concept of computation in cognitive science is discussed in this article. Computationalism is usually introduced as an empirical hypothesis that can be disconfirmed. Processing information is surely an important aspect of cognition so if computation is information processing, then cognition involves computation. Computationalism becomes more significant when it has explanatory power. The most relevant and explanatory notion of computation is that associated with digital computers. Turing analyzed computation in terms of what are now called Turing machines that are the kind of simple processor operating on an unbounded tape. Turing stated that any function that can be computed by an algorithm could be computed by a Turing machine. McCulloch and Pitts's account of cognition contains three important aspects that include an analogy between neural processes and digital computations, the use of mathematically defined neural networks as models, and an appeal to neurophysiological evidence to support their neural network models. Computationalism involves three accounts of computation such as causal, semantic, and mechanistic. There are mappings between any physical system and at least some computational descriptions under the causal account. The semantic account may be formulated as a restricted causal account.

Inverse number in dagaare

2021 ◽  
pp. 444-462
Author(s):  
Scott Grimm
Keyword(s):  
Number System ◽  
Formal Semantic ◽  
Semantic Classification ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Semantic Account ◽  
Number Systems ◽  
System P ◽  
Functional Grounding

This chapter examines the inverse number system in Dagaare (Gur; Niger–Congo). Inverse number systems possess a number morpheme which for some nouns encodes the plural interpretation while for others it encodes the singular interpretation. This chapter argues that a principled lexical semantic classification underlies the inverse number strategy in Dagaare, guiding whether for a particular noun the inverse morpheme codes the singular or the plural interpretation. The chapter further explores the functional grounding of inverse number, in terms of frequency and individuation, and presents a formal semantic account of the inverse number system.

Metaphor

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
John Kulvicki
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Account

Pictures can be used metaphorically. Many non-standard uses of pictures have been inaccurately classified as metaphorical. In addition, many seemingly metaphorical uses of pictures might not be that because they are used along with language. So, the first part of the chapter isolates strictly pictorial metaphors as a phenomenon. The chapter then shows that a semantic account of metaphor due to Josef Stern (2000) tidily accounts for these uses. This semantic operation is related to Kaplan’s dthat, but it does not yield a new singular content. Instead, it yields a new attributive content. In this way, pictures can be used to represent all manner of qualities that cannot figure in ordinary pictorial contents.

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